
Royalty statement discrepancy desk
Trace royalty discrepancies to statement lines and supplied terms.
- For
- Independent music and publishing finance teams
- Solves
- Royalty statements use incompatible labels and units.
- Delivers
- Royalty reconciliation query pack
- Built in
- about 5 weeks of creation time, MVP in 6 days
- Investment
- $16,000 for the MVP, $50,000 for the full product
- Run it
- Inside your business, or as part of your offer to clients
What it does
For independent music and publishing finance teams, turn licensed statements and approved royalty terms into royalty reconciliation query pack.
- Extract statement fields.
- Normalize agreed units.
- Match work identifiers.
- Compare stated rates.
- Flag unexplained deductions.
- Export queries.
What goes in, what comes out
- Licensed statements
- Approved royalty terms
AI drafts, people review. Structured comparison and clarification workspace.
- Royalty reconciliation query pack
How it works
The workflow
- InStart with
Licensed statements and approved royalty terms
- 1
The buyer creates a project
- 2
Supplies licensed statements and approved royalty terms
- 3
Confirms scope and access
- OutFinish with
Royalty reconciliation query pack
AI does the heavy lifting, people stay in charge
Extract line items while deterministic rules recompute supplied rates. Keep model suggestions separate from verified facts. Link factual outputs to authorized input evidence and show missing information explicitly. Use deterministic checks for counts, dates, identifiers and arithmetic where applicable. A designated reviewer validates consequential outputs and signs off the delivered result.
What your team sees
Key screens: Statement import, Term comparison, Exception ledger. Use a side-by-side matrix with the same fields for every document or option. Clicking a value reveals its original passage. Highlight missing, different and uncertain items separately. Provide a clarification queue and reviewer annotations before exporting a decision pack. Open with statement import; move into term comparison for the detailed task; finish in exception ledger for review and handoff. Show the source record, uncertainty and approval status beside each proposed output.
Accounts and administration
Document versions, field definitions, source references, reviewer corrections, unresolved questions, comparison history and exportable matrices. Include organization-scoped access, named project owners, review queues, usage limits, export history and retention settings. Never reuse private customer material for other accounts without permission.
Integrations and data access
Accounting exports, invoice records and finance review processes. Document repositories, procurement or contract records and spreadsheet exports. Preserve originals and avoid writing back interpretations without approval. Begin with uploads and exports of licensed statements and approved royalty terms. Any named system or connector is a candidate requiring current access and compatibility checks; no live connection is included by default.
How we build it
We build with our own AI software development factory, so most implementations take days to a few weeks of creation time, not months. You see working software at every step, and exact timing depends on availability.
- 1
Scoping call
Day 1Thirty minutes on your process, your data and how you want to run it: for your own team, or for your clients. You get a fixed scope and price for the MVP.
- 2
MVP
6 daysOne buyer segment, one recurring use case; first modules: extract statement fields; normalize agreed units. Manual review in the loop. Built by our AI software factory.
- 3
Paid pilot
7 daysAccounts, roles, review states, audit trail and the first integration, hardened for two to three paying pilot customers.
- 4
Full product
3 weeksSelf-serve onboarding, billing, monitoring and the wider integration set.
- 5
Run and improve
MonthlyWe host, monitor and improve it for a fixed monthly fee, or hand it over to your team. How the retainer works.
Why we start with an MVP
An MVP, or minimum viable product, is the smallest version that your users can actually work with. It is not a cheap version of the full solution. It is a test, built to answer the questions that decide whether the rest is worth building.
- Pick the riskiest assumption. Here: will independent music and publishing finance teams use it to solve "royalty statements use incompatible labels and units"?
- Build only what tests it. One team, one use case, a few core modules. People do the rest by hand for now.
- Run a paid pilot. Agree the acceptance criteria, input limits and reviewer responsibilities before starting.
- Measure, then decide. Track reviewed discrepancies and processing time. Then expand, change course or stop, with evidence instead of opinions.
MVP scope for this solution. Costed pilot: One statement family; legal interpretation excluded. Start with one buyer organization and a bounded set of representative inputs. Implement the first two modules: extract statement fields; normalize agreed units. Support the third task through an assisted review queue: match work identifiers. Handle the remaining required functions manually until validated. Include input upload, source references, user correction, a reviewer approval step and export of royalty reconciliation query pack. Authentication, account isolation, deletion controls and basic operational logging are included. Specialized production certification, live write integrations and broader rollout are not included unless explicitly stated.
After the MVP. After paying customers repeatedly accept royalty reconciliation query pack, automate compare stated rates; flag unexplained deductions; export queries. Add one tested read integration, reusable customer configuration and scheduled repeat delivery. Increase supported formats or teams only when evaluation cases and reviewer capacity cover the new scope. One statement family; legal interpretation excluded.
What the build depends on. Document alignment, field provenance, unit normalization, missing-value handling and reviewer correction. Similar-looking documents may contain materially different terms. Obtain representative authorized inputs, an agreed review rubric and a buyer-side owner. Specific scope: One statement family; legal interpretation excluded.
Investment
A planning range to start the conversation, not a quote. You pay per phase, so you can stop after the MVP.
- Phase 1
MVP
One buyer segment, one recurring use case; first modules: extract statement fields; normalize agreed units. Manual review in the loop.
- Phase 2
Paid pilot
Accounts, roles, review states, audit trail and the first integration, hardened for two to three paying pilot customers.
- Phase 3
Full product
Self-serve onboarding, billing, monitoring and the wider integration set.
Indicative total, MVP to full product$50,000about 5 weeks of creation time · start with the MVP from $16,000
Running costs per month
A rough indication of monthly hosting and AI model costs once it is live, not tested. Real costs depend on usage, file sizes and the models chosen.
| Stage | Hosting and infrastructure | AI usage | Total per month |
|---|---|---|---|
| MVP and paid pilotabout 3 customers | $50–$100 | $50–$100 | $100–$200 |
| Full productabout 50 customers | $190–$380 | $350–$700 | $540–$1,080 |
Run it or resell it
For your own team
Independent music and publishing finance teams run it inside the business: licensed statements and approved royalty terms in, royalty reconciliation query pack out, reviewed by your people.
As part of your offer
Agencies, consultancies and software companies can offer it to their own clients under their brand. We build and maintain it; you sell and deliver it.
Your brand, or this one
Run it under your own brand, or start from this concept style.
- primary
#519127 - accent
#8154c9 - surface
#e9f1e4 - ink
#22201e
- Headings
- Playfair Display
- Text
- Source Sans 3
- Voice
- Exact, sober, trustworthy
Selling it to your own clients: the go-to-market playbook
Pricing to test
Test USD 300-1,500 for one bounded comparison package, then USD 150-600 monthly for recurring volume with review limits. Complex expert interpretation is separately priced. Figures are hypotheses. For this buyer, package the first sale around compare two royalty periods and the defined royalty reconciliation query pack. Record actual review effort before offering a recurring allowance. The commercial pilot fee is distinct from the platform development budget.
Message to test
Trace royalty discrepancies to statement lines and supplied terms. Demonstrate the result with compare two royalty periods for independent music and publishing finance teams. Use a concrete before-and-after example without promising unmeasured savings.
Where to find buyers
Rights administrators and independent publisher associations
Lead magnet
Compare two royalty periods
The first 30 days
- Week 1: interview five prospective buyers from independent music and publishing finance teams and inspect how they handle royalty statements use incompatible labels and units.
- Week 2: prepare compare two royalty periods using authorized or synthetic material.
- Week 3: share the demonstration through rights administrators and independent publisher associations and seek one bounded paid pilot.
- Week 4: measure reviewed discrepancies and processing time, review delivery effort and ask for a repeat purchase. This is a validation schedule, not a promise that the full product can be built in thirty days.
Paid pilot
Agree the acceptance criteria, input limits and reviewer responsibilities before starting. Run compare two royalty periods and deliver royalty reconciliation query pack. Compare reviewed discrepancies and processing time with the buyer's current process on comparable cases; include corrections, missed issues and reviewer time. Seek payment and repeat use. Stop or revise the scope if data access, accuracy or unit economics fail.
Success metrics
Reviewed discrepancies and processing time
Retention and expansion
Build repeat use around royalty reconciliation query pack. Save approved configurations and review decisions with permission, revisit unresolved exceptions and show progress on reviewed discrepancies and processing time. Offer a recurring volume allowance after repeat demand; expand to adjacent tasks only when the buyer asks and delivery quality remains acceptable.
Why clients would pick it
A niche comparison schema, reviewed extraction examples and clear handling of the differences that matter to a specific buyer. For this concept, accumulate permissioned examples and reviewer corrections around trace royalty discrepancies to statement lines and supplied terms. The durable asset is reliable task-specific execution and trusted customer configuration, not access to a general-purpose AI model.
Alternatives and positioning
Spreadsheet comparisons, professional reviewers, document diff tools and manual quote or contract review. Position this concept around trace royalty discrepancies to statement lines and supplied terms. Compare it against the customer's current process on the same representative task. This is proposed differentiation; no exhaustive competitor study or uniqueness claim has been established.
Main delivery costs
Document parsing, field alignment, source verification, expert interpretation, clarification rounds and changing document formats. Initial validation additionally budgets for rights accountant review. Track model usage, storage, reviewer minutes, exception handling and customer support per accepted deliverable.
Safeguards
Reconcile calculations to approved records. Keep proposed entries and payment actions under finance-team control. Never invent missing financial inputs. One statement family; legal interpretation excluded. Require appropriate access and publication approval. Preserve source material, label AI drafts and make corrections traceable. Measure false positives and missed cases alongside speed.